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/ 4 November 2002
Mountain people around the world are in danger of losing their cultures and being caught by conflict and environmental degradation, according to a United Nations report. Environmental and social pressures on the remotest regions are escalating.
In the bleached shantytowns of southern Africa they call them the ”ugly sisters” — a twin force of such devastation that from the wreckage it is seldom possible to distinguish one sibling’s impact from the other: Aids and hunger have become inseparable.
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/ 26 September 2002
The fight against poverty in the developing world is being hampered by stringent patent laws imposed by rich countries, an independent commission said last week. Protecting patent rights through the Trips agreement pushes up the price of medicines and seeds for poor countries.
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/ 24 September 2002
The Canadian engineering company Acres International of Ontario has been found guilty of paying bribes for contracts on the multibillion rand Lesotho Highlands Water Project dams, a judgement which could have profound implications for Third World development projects.
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/ 20 September 2002
Irvine Welsh has chronicled the coping mechanisms of the culture that spawned him. And now his old mates have a new fix, an orgiastic outlet for their anger: porn. Sally Vincent reports from London.
New York City in 2022. Half the 40-million people in the swarming metropolis are unemployed, the air is thick with pollution, food and water are as precious as jewels. This was the world of the future as envisaged in the sci-fi thriller, Soylent Green, in 1973.
We smile affectionately at the Morris dancers and bow if introduced to the Queen. But it does seem to me that in the matter of ”games”, such as those currently taking place in Manchester, north-west England, we are taking tradition too far to be healthy.
Northern Ireland faces a ”nightmare scenario” with Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists Party (DUP) and Sinn Fein becoming the dominant parties and the peace process in such trouble that it would take a generation to resolve, First Minister David Trimble said this week.
FORMER South African president Nelson Mandela plans to visit the Libyan
secret agent imprisoned in Glasgow for planting the bomb on a plane that
killed 270 people over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, a Sunday
paper said.
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/ 12 January 2002
A British family doctor convicted of killing 15 patients, and suspected of killing 200 or more, was found dead in his prison cell on Tuesday, the British Prison Service said. Dr Harold Shipman was found hanging in his cell at Wakefield Prison in northern England at 6.20am and was pronounced dead at 8:10am.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has told a British member of parliament that he will implement United Nations resolutions and allow arms inspectors into his country.
An English court has ruled that a father should get custody of his two children because his ex-wife uses the Internet to meet men.
A fiberglass bust that purportedly shows the true face of ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamun went on display this week at London’s Science Museum.
An Italian is among the suspects who have been arrested in connection with the main Bali bombing. Newspapers identified him as Andrea Giovanni Sorteni, 38, from Milan, and said he was detained soon after the devastating attack on the Sari Club.
The United Nations chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, yesterday accused hawks in Washington, who are bent on going to war with Iraq, of conducting a smear campaign against him.
A male nurse who admitted lighting the fire that killed the billionaire banker Edmond Safra was yesterday sentenced to 10 years in prison, bringing to an end an extraordinary tragedy of errors that rocked the wealthy Mediterranean enclave of Monaco to its foundations.
The reputation of Silvio Berlusconi’s government sank to a new low at the weekend when newspapers published photographs of members of his coalition casting multiple votes.
The bankers of Cape plc — the company that reached an out-of-court settlement with asbestosis victims last year — would be held personally responsible if it is proved they were responsible for reneging on the agreement, says the victims’ legal counsel.
South African financial services group Investec Plc detailed plans on Monday to raise nearly 100-million pounds via a London share sale to expand its businesses, braving jittery stock markets.
The Aids epidemic is causing the spiralling disintegration of some of the poorest countries in Africa, precipitating famine and social, political and economic collapse, says the latest official United Nations update.
Up to 10-million US health workers, police officers and firefighters are to be vaccinated against smallpox, according to a Bush administration official.
British forces geared up Friday for a major logistical exercise on home ground, as the defence ministry denied a press report that advance parties of British troops would soon deploy to Kuwait.
The only human contact Peter Shaw was allowed during the past four months was the sight of his kidnappers’ hands passing food down into the dank, underground hole where he lay chained at the neck.
An Islamist state government in northern Nigeria has issued a fatwa urging Muslims to kill the British-educated author of the newspaper article on the Miss World contest which triggered three days of religious rioting that left more than 220 people dead.
The biggest group of British companies since the Gulf War plans to travel to the Baghdad Trade Fair in November, brushing off threats of war and defying government advice to steer clear of Iraq.
Beer brands such as Castle, Ursus and Zero Clock may mean little to most Americans, but in emerging markets they have helped establish SAB as a leading global competitor.
The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, clashed with Washington yesterday over the enforcement of no-fly zones in Iraq by American and British warplanes.
Belgium’s 19th century royal palace has been given an unconventional makeover by one of the country’s most innovative artists, who has taken the unusual step of glueing 1,6-metre iridescent green beetles to its ceiling.
It was like the ”first day at school”, said a beaming Romano Prodi, surveying the European parliament yesterday as new boys and girls from Lithuania to Slovakia gave a foretaste of the future of the continent.
The German ambassador has attacked history teaching in British schools, claiming it fuels xenophobia by focusing solely on his country’s Nazi past. Thomas Matussek’s comments follow an assault on two German schoolboys by a gang of youths in London.
Concern over their daughter’s safety, following the recent murder of two 10-year-olds, have led her parents to allow a controversial British cybernetics expert to implant a tracking device in her.
Indonesia has arrested the man they had named as the mastermind of last month’s Bali bombings which killed almost 200 people, the national police chief announced.